CONSCIOUS YACHTING
Aquatic ecosystems are fragile. EPHYRA opens up a new horizon for boating and redefines its codes. By combining benevolence and performance, it's an invitation to travel, uncompromising pleasure, and absolute freedom. With EPHYRA, for the first time, powerboat navigation becomes clean, quiet, and responsible.
THE QUEST
The global growth of leisure boating - consisting of 87% powerboats - increasingly impacts freshwater and marine fauna, flora, and habitats. Among the sources of pollution: CO2 emissions, oil and fuel leaks, noise, and the suspension of sediments. EPHYRA's quest, as much as a challenge, was to propose a new mode of navigation that is performant, safe, autonomous, and sustainable, while bringing together a community of committed and responsible actors and users.
THE CHALLENGE
The path opened by The New Era, the first pleasure yacht with electro-hydrogen propulsion developed by our shipyard HYNOVA, faced many constraints: costs, transportation, storage, and legislation that hindered the development of hydrogen as a fuel solution. Another challenge for EPHYRA was to solve the question of the origin of hydrogen, which is mainly produced from fossil fuels. A nonsense for a mode of navigation that we wanted to have the most neutral ecological impact possible.
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THE SOLUTION
Like the protective and benevolent aquatic nymph of mythology, EPHYRA has created a global, autonomous, and virtuous solution where, just like in nature, all interdependent elements live in symbiosis. Thus was born the world's first sustainable nautical ecosystem, including on a single site: the production of green hydrogen for refueling, zero-emission powerboats, and a community of responsible navigators offering exclusive services to its members.
To extract hydrogen, EPHYRA has chosen a decarbonized process: water molecules are decomposed by electrolysis using an electric current generated only by renewable energies. The operation takes place on-site, in an autonomous EPHYRA station.
The benefits of green H2: it is an energy carrier that transports energy that can be used later and thus meets the constraints of energy storage and intermittent renewable production. It is lightweight, clean, and efficient - 1kg of hydrogen releases 2.8 times more energy than 1kg of gasoline.
